Fully dedicated to women’s fitness and health, the Fitness4Her™ Diet and Exercise program will help you lose weight and get in shape without ever having to count a single calorie. Learn to live life to it’s fullest, love food, enjoy exercise and celebrate the beauty in you. ~ Karen

What if I told you there were proven ways to burn body fat that don’t require heavy equipment or a gym membership? You can easily boost the power of basic moves to see significant results. All of the exercises in my 30 Minutes to a New You exercise program burn fat and build muscle without any sophisticated equipment.

A stability ball is inexpensive to purchase but delivers a powerful punch. The instability of the ball means that you will burn twice the amount of fat and get double the workout. Working out with the ball could cut an inch from your waist in just 4 weeks.

Cardio blasts are excellent for burning bundles of body fat, too. With these you go from strength training exercises to short cardio bursts of energy, like jumping jacks for a few minutes or running in place, then back to strength training.

Adding short bouts of vigorous activity to your fitness routine can speed up weight loss and help you slim down faster. Intervals increase calorie burn both during and after exercise to help you lose weight quicker. These types of workouts increase adrenaline, a hormone that helps to burn belly fat.

You can even flatten your abdominal muscles and strengthen your back in easy Pilate’s moves that take less than 15 minutes to complete.

Your abdominal muscles are found in your stomach, just under your ribcage and extending down to your pelvic area. The abs are made up of six muscles. These muscles are vital for body posture.

Your six muscles referred to as the abs are the Transverses Abdominis, Two Internal Obliques, Two External Obliques, and the Rectus Abdominis. Working these muscles will not only give you the famed six-pack abs, they also give you better posture, for back pain relief, and help you when you bend-over, or reach for objects on upper shelves.

There are thousands of books written about burning fat and building muscle, but not all are in agreement. There are many fallacies and fairy tales pertaining to losing weight and burning fat. I have outlined some of these below and I discuss each one.

Fairy Tale: Exercising the abs will burn belly fat. No doubt, you have probably seen plenty of products that claim to melt away just belly fat, just thigh fat, just arm fat … From exercising, taking pills, using creams, or even electronic stimulation! The truth is that you simply can’t burn fat from one area of your body. Fat loss occurs throughout your entire body at the same time. have you ever seen someone will the belly of a 400-lbs person and the arms of a bodybuilder? It’s simply not possible (without liposuction!) to burn fat in one area. Your body breaks down fat for energy from all portions of your body so not to deplete any one single area. Fat acts as an insulator. It wouldn’t make sense for your body to remove all the “insulation” from a single place. Aerobic exercise along with a balanced diet will enable you to burn fat all over your body. Working out a specific area is good for you and will build muscle, but will not burn that fat away! You need to do aerobic activities and strength exercises to burn fat and have a toned body. My 30 Minute
to a New You exercise program incorporates both of these types of exercise.

Fairy Tale: Fat on my body comes from eating fatty foods. Instead of eating cookies, you might eat popcorn with no butter to avoid fat. Or maybe you eat a couple chicken breasts because you know they have less fat than a burger. For some reason, your body fat just isn’t going down! That’s because fat in foods is not the same as fat in your body. In reality, fat comes from calories and it doesn’t matter where those calories come from. Fatty foods tend to have a lot of calories, but they do not turn into fat unless you are overeating them. If your body is taking in more calories than it needs, it does what anyone would do with extras–store them. Stored calories in the body are covered to fat! Your body needs nutrients from all different kinds of foods, but the important thing is to not overeat any type of food. Eating a small, balanced meal will ensure you aren’t getting too many calories and aren’t adding to your body fat content.

Fairy Tale: Exercising the abs will burn belly fat. You’ve probably seen plenty of products that claim to melt away just belly fat, just thigh fat, just arm fat… From exercising, taking pills, using creams, or even electronic stimulation! The truth is that you simply can’t burn fat from one area of your body. Fat loss occurs throughout your entire body at the same time. Have you ever seen someone will the belly of a 400-lbs person and the arms of a bodybuilder? It’s simply not possible (without liposuction!) to burn fat in one area. Your body breaks down fat for energy from all portions of your body so not to deplete any one single area. Fat acts as an insulator. It wouldn’t make sense for your body to remove all the “insulation” from a single place. Aerobic exercise along with appropriate eating will enable you to burn fat all over your body. Working out a specific area is good for you and will build muscle, but will not burn that fat away!

Fairy Tale: Skip meals or go on a starvation diet to cause your body to burn fat. If you skip meals or go on a hunger strike, your body is not taking in energy through calories, so your body is forced to break down the fat in your body for energy. The result of this is an immediate decrease in body fat. One problem: You’ll gain it all back and more when you start eating again! Depriving yourself of food puts your body into “starvation mode.” When you reintroduce food, your body (worried about having to survive another hunger strike) stores as much as possible in fat reserves. To make things worse, starving people will overeat resulting in the body having even more fat than before. In order to burn fat and keep it off, you have to eat so your body has a continuous source of energy and will not go into starvation mode. This is what causes the Yo-Yo form of dieting. You lose weight but end up gaining it all back and then some.

Fairy Tale: My body is fat because I eat fatty foods. Instead of eating cookies, you might eat popcorn with no butter to avoid fat. Or maybe you eat a couple chicken breasts because you know they have less fat than a burger. For some reason, your body fat just isn’t going down! That’s because fat in foods is not the same as fat in your body.

Any amount of exercise will burn body fat. When you exercise for more than 20 minutes, your body starts to get concerned that it will run out of the regular energy source. So, it starts breaking down fat to supplement that energy. If you exercise for less than 20 minutes, your body most likely has not started breaking down fat, no matter how many calories the LCD screen displays. You need to get your heart rate up for at least 30 minutes in order to burn body fat.

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3 Comments

Great info. I’ve a 4 yr. old daughter & I started exeercising again last year & hav seen grat results thus far. I just need help with the flabby belly from the pregnancy, Energy level is high, flexibility increased, fitness increased. Thanks for the info. Karen.

Kinda De Bique on 10/28/2010 at 8:25 pm

Karen,

Love the site!

I am a trainer as well, and I also thought that a calorie was calorie no matter where it comes from, but last week I was emailed this Youtube video of a child obesity specialist giving a presentation called Sugar: The Bitter Truth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

In this presentation he shows chemically that only 20% of sucrose enters the liver and 80% is used by the body, but that 100% of high fructose corn syrup goes straight to the liver because no part of the body can use it. Of course the chemicals that come out the other side contribute directly to adipose (fatty) tissue growth!